Madam Speaker, the beer is cold and the steaks are thick on golden pond. That is exactly where his cottage is and he cannot deny that.
He said that the workers work perhaps four hours a day. They are reasonably well paid, he said. Then he said they can attend to their chores when they return home, because most of them are women and they go home to do chores. That is an insult to rural mail couriers, because they are hardworking. In fact they are the working poor. The evidence is here that will prove that. He got on to this tirade about how this is just another union movement. That is absolutely false. It has nothing to do with a union in a sense. It has everything to do with fairness for workers who basically do the same job as their city cousins. That is it.
The previous critic, from the great riding of St. John's West, who is now sitting behind me, wrote to André Ouellet, the president and chief executive officer of Canada Post. I will tell members what he said, because this is the basic honesty that I think can come only from the Conservative Party. I, along with this member and others, am taking credit for this, for changing our position on this, because at one time we had a ridiculous position on it, which the government now maintains. It is the position it inherited from us, among other things, which it kept and did not change.
The member basically made three points to the president of Canada Post. He wants the rural mail couriers to be entitled to “more fair and equitable wages and allow”--fairer, that would be a grammatical error that I did not commit; I am just quoting from the letter--“collective bargaining...to improve wages and working conditions”. Remember, this is authored by a man from Newfoundland.
A third point, and the most important, is the repeal of subsection 13(5) of the Canada Post Corporation Act. That would eliminate the disparity between the city mouse, as exemplified by the parliamentary secretary, and the country mouse that we on this side of the House are attempting to defend.
Madam Speaker, I would suggest that you carefully read the blues tomorrow yourself to realize how far off base the parliamentary secretary is on this issue and reflect on what we are saying on this side of the House, because our parliamentary language was concise, was precise. Nothing unparliamentary was said. Government members simply do not want their own words thrown back at them in the House during debate. That is what the issue is.
The fact of the matter is that we come to the House to defend citizens of this country when they are being treated unfairly. One might say that internationally we do that and we have a proud history of doing that. When we see an injustice or unfairness in Canadian society being exercised by Canada Post, it is incumbent upon us as elected representatives to do something about it, to bring it to the attention of the House and to bring it to the attention of the government so that the Canadian public understands the level of unfairness that is being exercised by Canada Post.
Canada Post has had some success stories. That is one thing I do agree on with the parliamentary secretary. It has had some success.